What happens when you have 5 puppies around the house? You get lots of helpers. There is always a puppy around to help with the cooking. There are always plenty of puppies willing to help take the pesky shine off of your floor with muddy feet. They are very eager to help dig holes in the yard, I mean help in the garden- even though they are also very eager to carry off the new plants that you just put in and then play chase with them around the yard. Of the 12 cabbage plants we put in, I am shocked that there are still 7 alive. After they kept pulling them up, I thought for sure that none of the plants would make it.This weekend, Mr. M and Miss S found a new task they wanted to help with- cleaning the ceiling fan. Well, OK, really they just were curious about the ladder and wanted to help climb it to see why Dad was up so high.

I see climbing sailboat companion-way steps in his future...

Mr. C keeps everyone motivated and tries to calm everyone down by letting them chew on his ears. It always amazes us how calm he is with the younger puppies. He is well over 70 pounds and could hurt them easily, but never even acts like he is going to try to hurt them. He lets them chew on him, he lets them pull his collar, he lets them lay on him, walk on him and take his toys without even growling at them.

Mr. C on guard while Miss M supervises the digging efforts. Miss M gets everyone started digging and then makes sure everyone is digging in the right spot.

After Miss M finds crabs for us on the beach, Miss S helps out by stalking the crabs.

Don't worry. The crab is just playing dead to convince Miss S to come in close enough to pinch her nose.

Miss B is very helpful at the beach. She sniffs the water to verify water quality. Of course she also sometimes goes to the bathroom in the water too...

Miss M is very helpful by being super cute. She acts as the alarm clock- making sure everyone is awake in time for breakfast.

Today, the weather was nice again, but we opted to just go to the beach instead of pulling out the hammock. The weather is supposed to get colder in the next few days, so we wanted to make the most of the warm weather before it goes away for three or four days. Ah, Texas winters... The puppies are always eager to go to the beach and we had no trouble getting them into their harnesses and into the car. We fooled them a little by taking them all outside before bringing out the harness bag and bringing them in one by one to put their harnesses on. When they are in their crates and see the bag, they go nuts, and we wanted to avoid the squealing. We were having an uneventful walk until Miss M made a discovery. She was doing her normal archaeological activities (i.e. digging big holes in the sand), jumping, digging, spinning, digging some more, when all of a sudden she started shaking something.

I think Mr. Crab was just as shocked as we were that Miss M found him. There weren't even any crab holes around that we saw. As it turns out, Miss M has serious crab hunting skills. The hole that she dug to get him was about 2 feet deep! We are convinced that she could totally be trained as a search and rescue dog.

Notice the surprised crab in the bottom right of this picture

Apparently, crabs play dead too. I thought for sure the puppies had killed him when I saw him laying on his back not moving. Then, just as a curious puppy nose got within range of his claws, he sprang to life. This proved very effective as the puppies took turns investigating and having their noses pinched.

Miss S about to discover Mr. Crabs wily ways

Miss B going in for her nose pinch

All of the puppies trying to tell if he is still alive- notice how far back they are

Notice how he is now standing back on his feet again with his claws up

Mr. C decided two nose pinches was enough and told the others they would need to handle that themselves

After a few minutes, we decided to quit torturing the crab and let him go on his merry way. Miss B was the voice of reason here. She was concerned that if we didn't leave him alone, he would tell the rest of his crabby friends that pitbulls were mean dogs. She didn't want that kind of stigma within the crab community.

The rest of the walk was pleasant. Miss M found an empty crab carapace that she then carried around and Miss S checked out some birds- they didn't want to be friends with her.